What to Expect in Today's Israeli Election

After a short but sweet three-month campaign, Israeli voters are out in force for today's national elections, but most are not expecting all that much to change. The coalition of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conservative Likud Party and the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party is expected to retain power when the polls close tonight, but the joint ticket may still lose one or two seats in the Knesset.

There seems to be a lot of anxiety over Netanyahu's leadership, given the prospects of war with Iran, a just-finished mini-war in Gaza, a shaky economy, and the growing influence of the settler movement. Even some Likud voters are becoming disaffected, but the difficulty seems to be in finding a reasonable electoral alternative. One of the more prominent opposition parties, Labor, has been unable to build its own coalition challenger, and is likely to win only a small minority of seats in the legislature.

Not that Netanyahu's critics haven't tried to come up with an alternative — they've tried very hard in this at times ferocious campaign. One of the most scathing anti-"Bibi" editorials is titled "Vote as if your life depended on it. It does."